The Eyes Are Watching Us: Why You Need To Incorporate Video Marketing Into Your Digital Campaign

It is a saying we have heard our entire life; “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Well, that phrase needs a 2014 re-boot. While photography has always provided a great enhancement to quality writing, the media and public relations worlds are going through another full-blown transformation in this age of ever-changing digital consumption of media. That change is video and lots of it.

Holding Their Attention: Video vs Text

In a recent study, Cisco reports that the number of online video consumers will double to 1.5 billion by 2015, with total online video consumption predicted to quadruple. The benefits of this growth are apparent everywhere. Individuals often find it helpful to visually learn new material rather than reading through long, complex product descriptions or recaps of events. In the Twitter-age of quick synopsis reading, the consumer is spending less time than ever on any individual website and generally prefers a short précis of the article. However, when it comes to video, all of this changes. In our fast-paced digital world, video is now the way to keep your readers engaged in your given topic and may, on its own, directly bring in customers.

Video marketing is a powerful means that businesses can utilize to improve their engagement with the consumer or to interest potential consumers in a topic or subject matter that might not otherwise capture their attention. Many small businesses and PR outlets are utilizing video marketing as a means to improve consumer engagement, click-throughs, and traffic. A study provided by KEMEMedia demonstrated that including video in emails increased open rates by 5.6% and click-through-rates by 96.38%, when compared to emails that did not contain videos. ReelSEO’s own survey confirmed that 82% of video marketers considered video email marketing to be effective.

The inclusion of videos can also improve search traffic since the major search engines started ranking videos in their results pages. Incorporating videos also increases traffic for press releases and news when they are shared. Sharing has been shown to be much more likely when a video is included. The potential opportunities for videos to go viral provides an additional perk to companies using video marketing.

Videos And Press Releases

On top of producing videos to couple with content for PR, there is the fine line between making a commercial and truly producing interesting content. When integrating a video with your press release it is more important to try and produce something interesting with what you are trying to promote rather than content that is overly technical. The easiest way to accomplish this objective is to determine whether you would be interested in seeing your own video. While video is imperative now for product promotion, there is also a tremendous amount of content online that is competing for the minds of potential consumers. If the video does not have a hook or doesn’t otherwise captivate your potential audience, it will be lost on the viewer.

From the research and data it is abundantly clear that consumers’ viewing habits are moving strongly towards video. This means that individuals with video production skills are going to be increasingly in-demand and the quality of video products will continue to improve. This concept is well explained in the movie Moneyball where Billy Beane tells his long-time MLB scout to “Adapt or Die”. While that is a brutally honest way to provide the feedback, with consumers’ attention switch to video, it is important to keep up with the changing times with what you are trying to promote.

It is important for businesses to invest in the personnel and technology necessary to ensure that they continue to stay current with all the latest video trends in their efforts to promote a product or a message.